WREXHAM’S weekend victory and results elsewhere have given manager Dean Saunders fresh hope that the league’s automatic promotion spot is still up for grabs.

Speaking ahead of tonight’s Racecourse clash with Eastbourne Borough, the Dragons boss believes the Blue Square Bet Premier title race remains wide open, even though Crawley Town and Luton Town are widely regarded as the main contenders for the one guaranteed ticket into the Football League.

He said: “There are 33 points to play for and to be fair we have won nine out of our last 13 games. So if we can start another run – say get it up to five on the trot – I’m thinking we are only nine points behind the leaders, Wimbledon, with two games in hand.

“So we are still in there and Saturday’s result has done that. Although Luton and Crawley have games in hand, we’ve been in a similar situation and you only have to draw a couple of them and it’s like two defeats.

“We’ve just got to try and get a run together now. I know it’s a big ask but I’m going to put it to the players about winning the five games to get us right up there.

“I’m thinking about the top spot with five wins, while a win tomorrow and another on Saturday would put us in a really good position in terms of the play-offs. If you then go on from that with two more wins on the trot we might have a chance of the top spot, depending on results elsewhere.”

Saunders claimed last Saturday’s narrow 2-1 victory over Forest Green Rovers had gone a long way towards banishing the memories of a 7-2 home defeat by Gateshead a fortnight earlier.

“Hopefully we have learned our lesson from Gateshead and we are going into the game with respect for Eastbourne,” he added.

“We’ve just been over the (Forest Green) DVD and had a look at the things we did well and those that we didn’t do well in the second half and hopefully that will help us tomorrow. We just slacked off a bit in the second half because we weren’t winning as many headers, as many second balls and we were giving the ball away too much.

“We had to beat Forest Green by hook or by crook and the players put in a great effort. We are learning that when we do get in front against teams and we have to keep the ball against 10 men, we need to keep the ball a bit better.

“We don’t need to go end-to-end or play at a high tempo, we have got to slow the game down a little bit and keep the ball away from the opposition. That’s where you get a rest, but against Forest Green we didn’t think enough about what we were doing and we were probably a bit nervous after conceding the goal.

“The easy thing to do is just kick it anywhere so you need two or three players out there to show a bit of composure and encourage the others to relax. They need someone to put their foot on the ball and give people a chance to walk into position before giving them the ball.

“The only thing that disappointed me was that we didn’t get a third goal because we might have been able to canter out.

“Instead we had to put it all in right up to the 95th minute again, which wasn’t ideal with a game on Tuesday. We could have made it easy instead of running around like lunatics to stop the ball going in our net.

“We do some stupid things at times but in the main the players have done fantastic so far and they’ve just got to keep going now.”

Wrexham could be without both Chris Blackburn and Dean Keates this evening after the pair missed yesterday’s training session with calf and knee injuries respectively.

“Chris Blackburn and Dean Keates are both struggling, but fingers crossed they might be okay for tomorrow,” said Saunders.

Eastbourne arrive at the Racecourse on the back of successive league victories against Fleetwood Town and Southport, having waited since October to pick up three points.